Months have different names, but through the times
of Snow Crust, Broken Snowshoes, then Maple-Sugar-Making,
Edmonia hunches over her work the way her aunts had
over baskets woven of rumor, nostalgia, and some truth.
One afternoon, a wealthy widow with two homes
to decorate orders a marble statue of Minnehaha
bidding her father good-bye.
Edmonia’s hands smell like a riverbank
as she rehearses expressions in soft, changeable clay,
which soothes her palms.
Then holding the vision of a face, she steps
toward a great block of marble. She swings a mallet
onto a thick, pointed chisel. She cuts away coarse layers
toward imagination’s strong, sure lines.
Slowly she sees a Sioux man carving arrowheads
just before his daughter leaves everything
she knows to live among the Ojibwe.
Two figures in one stone double the risks.
But she loves the heft of the chisel,
the scent and taste on her tongue of soft warm dust,
the sting as small chips bounce off her skin,
the clamor she creates. As a face’s features emerge,
it takes more effort to tap more gently. She knows
she’s near the end when her breath flows
smoothly as a needle through deerskin.
Leaving the studio, she’s caught
between places and times.
She feels the curves of cobblestones under her soles,
the precise angle of air against her palms.
Briefly she becomes a girl in soft moccasins
again: Earth speaks back.